One thing that was easier when there were 2 submission slots per day (Ingress + Pogo) was using multiple slots for a single submission, when it was something more than 20km away [Ingress distance limit] and you could expect it to be eligible but rejected by the community.
This is of course still possible, but you have fewer slots to ‘waste’ on this.
You are not alone in wanting accepted appeals returned, but there has been no noise from Niantic despite multiple requests. It might be that this would create too much work for them to cope with.
“Increased Opportunities to Appeal” is on the vague side of commitments and I have failed to notice Niantic making any similar comment in response to the multiple times that various posters have requested successful appeals to be returned. Hopefully this is under consideration.
If this does not support my complaint that I think there is a problematic group of reviewers in New England, I do not know what does. This was submitted alongside that birdhouse at Ken’s Steakhouse (a non-chain steakhouse) that was canned by the automated system. This rejection was at the hands of regional reviewers.
In summary, the piece is a large one-of-a-kind commissioned stained glass pane that was made from a local stained glass company. The piece is 50 years old, and has been installed for about that long. There are a few different pieces in the restaurant. This is probably the second most substantial and is a piece that I could trace the maker and date it was made (signed at the bottom of the pane). The most substantial piece was in a darker bar room that I probably would have been dinged for image brightness. This submission is in the vein of CostcoShopper13’s advice of submitting a unique object in a restaurant.
Pick apart whatever you think is wrong with this submission, but this is probably one of the single worst sets of rejection reasons I’ve seen. I feel this is reviewer abuse.
I didn’t think I needed to put this in my submission, but if anyone really needs further verification of this piece, the back side of the pane is visible from the outside on Streetview: Google Maps
I hope you all can agree that the provided reasons for rejection are blatantly wrong. The first rejection reason about body parts/faces is surely referencing the lady in the supporting photo (my girlfriend), which should have no bearing on the submission. There are clearly no body parts or faces of living things in the main photo. The second reason about being unsafe to access or inaccessible to the public is also blatantly wrong. Again, the supporting photo shows that this is in the dining room of a public-access steakhouse.
At best, these rejection reasons (especially the face/body parts) are the result of uneducated reviewers who are unaware that people can be present in supporting photos (especially in crowded spaces). At worst, there really is an abusive (perhaps even coordinated) voting bloc in New England, that is clearly not reviewing waypoints in a manner that is in line with Niantic guidelines.
Like I said before, I think I need a break if the regional community is going to be this ignorant. I hope a Niantic employee sees this rejection, so they can get a whiff of whatever is going on up here in New England and do something. I do not feel comfortable creating future submissions until this gets addressed. I feel like it is a waste of my time if clearly acceptable submissions are being rejected.
Edit to clarify: I am not saying that all nominations in this post are clearly acceptable. I am aware that the outlet was a lot more controversial than I initially thought, and that even the restaurant and ruins fall into a grey area where some would not accept. Between this and the friend I was talking about earlier, I believe there are genuine concerns of regional abuse:
When you get rejection reasons that don’t make sense to you, getting frustrated/annoyed/angry by them isn’t going to help much. It /can/ be annoying to get unreasonable rejection reasons, but it happens and the best way to deal with it is try to see what the reviewers didn’t like. Take this as the reviewers not liking this submission and see what can be done to improve it.
The supporting photo can have people in it, certainly. This is useful for cafes to show outside seating, for example. This supporting photo is bad and is going to make reviewers uncomfortable. It has an obvious person in the foreground who does not need to be there and could have been avoided. This will be why reviewers (incorrectly) chose the faces/body parts rejection.
The location of the stained glass is behind where people sit and eat with no way to get to it without interfering with guests. This will be why reviewers chose the inaccessibility rejection.
I’m sorry, I strongly disagree here. Correct me if I am wrong, but the rejection reason was for unsafe access. I believe this is a misinterpretation of the rejection reason. This is the tooltip for that rejection reason:
I disagree with that argument further. Most art-based submissions inside of restaurants that I have seen should have never been accepted, if this is the case. Most pieces I have seen waypoints for are in a dining room, usually on a wall and under a dining table. If you are seated in the dining room, at minimum, you can see the piece. If you are already a guest of the restaurant and really wanted to approach the piece to look at it, there is nothing physically stopping you or affecting your safety. Out of courtesy, I may ask any nearby diners if it is fine if I take a picture. It may be a little intrusive to walk up and take a look, but it’s certainly not the most unreasonable action to do.
I am not sure what you are disagreeing with. I haven’t rejected your submission, but have attempted to provide an explanation of why reviewers might have chosen these rejection reasons. Obviously I could be wrong, as I am not inside the minds of those reviewers. It’s also possible the reviewers are picking incorrect rejection reasons, but the basic point is they wanted to reject this submission and were looking for something to reject with.
I disagree that the unsafe accessibility argument is valid for this submission, and that whoever used it misused the rejection. I appreciate you pointing it out, and that is possible that that is what the reviewers were thinking. I had interpreted you saying that unsafe accessibility was a valid reason for this rejection (unlike how you explicitly stated that the face/body parts rejection was ultimately wrong on the part of the reviewers, even if I could have done more to avoid it).
The only reason I didn’t explicitly state it as invalid is because I personally would be uncomfortable with asking other guests to move aside so that I could reach the stained glass, and therefore understand why reviewers might feel this way. I would be a lot happier with POIs inside restaurants that are located alongside passageways/general walking areas than those behind tables.
Fair enough. Either way, the glaring issue stands that nothing in this submission triggered any of Niantic’s outlined criteria for rejection. This still points to a worrying trend in the regional reviewers of at best an uneducated reviewer base, and at worst a lazy or abusive group of bad reviewers.
There are the 2 recent examples in this thread of the friend with the former school building that was rejected as a school:
And the scenic overlook bench that regional reviewers rejected, and was approved by Niantic on appeal:
I can go on about at least 1-2 very questionable rejections from the last 1-2 months, and can ask around my community more if they have encountered poor rejections. As it stands, there is a concerning trend in the regional reviewer base.
None of this is evidence of regional abuse. Worldwide, reviewers don’t always follow criteria and guidelines strictly, and most of your rejections can be seen as having cause, even if you don’t agree.
Please try to avoid labelling all those that reviewed as uneducated, lazy, abusive. You too are part of that pool of reviewers.
We have no way of knowing how that pool actually voted and it could include people not living locally.
I am always aware that when I vote towards rejection, then there is a fellow wayfinder who thought it was suitable.
We all have submissions no matter where we are, that naturally we get frustrated about when they are rejected.
But when I look at mine I can usually find things I should have done differently or if I am fair it is probably a difference in the judgement call. And that’s ok. There is a lot of grey, vague areas in wayfarer.
We shouldn’t be striving for perfection in submitting, that would be stressful, I’m not a professional photographer, the weather is sometimes against me, some times in spite of repeated efforts a spelling error occurs. When I review I look to see if it’s good enough, I might accidentally click the wrong button and I expect that fellow reviewers, including Wayfarer Team reviewers are human and prone to mistakes.
We can be kind to our fellow humans.
I find people are more receptive to what I want to say when I show understanding.
Can we all do better? Yes
Can the feedback to all aspects of wayfinding be better? Yes
Can we reflect better on that feedback? Yes
I adore your supporting picture! If you get a chance,it would be super cool to add a picture of the view as the main photo there would make it look stunning in the photo disc and would make a lovely gift too
I have used careful word choice this entire time to indicate that not all reviewers are uneducated, lazy, or abusive. I have pointed out that it is those who opted to reject these waypoints for very questionable reasons are the bad apples that spoil the bunch. These incorrect rejections have consequences that both hurt the submitter by wasting their time and submission resources, as well as fellow reviewers who do recognize the waypoint as valid and rob them of an agreement.
Absolutely, people make mistakes, but these examples are at least partially not mistakes, and certainly not accidental.
Rejecting a waypoint on the premise of having a face or body parts in only the supporting photo is problematic. It represents that there were enough voters in the regional pool who are not educated on that rejection criteria. No misclick here either, as you have to actively navigate through the low quality menu and specifically select that rejection reason.
Rejecting a waypoint that is a historic building that was formerly a school, for the rejection reason of being a school, but clearly no longer is, is indicative of laziness. It was almost certainly rejected because of reviewers seeing the word “school” in the title or description, and having a knee-jerk reaction to immediately reject without reading any further.
This is diagnostic of there being a portion of the voting body who is hurting the rest of the community. I’m not saying the whole New England reviewer base is to blame. However, it may not hurt if Niantic looked into those who gave these rejection reasons, and see if they display a further trend of questionable review patterns. This could be used as an opportunity to intervene and educate, to better the region as a whole. It’s no question that the barrier of entry to join the review community has been virtually eliminated, compared to what it was (with the on boarding quiz and stricter level access, meaning more experience finding new waypoints). It would follow that the standard of education on reviewing guidelines may be lower too, and that has shown to be a problem here. As it stands, I have grown to distrust the regional community over rejections on submissions like the stained glass.
I’m all for being kind. I have a greater capacity of kindness for those who reciprocate.
Let me try enter the mindset of a possible reviewer trying to do a good job evaluating this nomination. I look at this very close crop of just the panel with an aspect ratio that is going to look weird in game, and am already wondering what is being hidden by the close crop and leaning towards rejecting. I look on the nearby, and the steakhouse is already a Wayspot, so why is a window for the steakhouse being submitted separately? It is a pretty window, so let me check out that link about the commission. Oh, the link is just about the glass company. No reference to this work. There are no links to any articles or announcements mentioning the significance of the installation. I can’t see the referenced maker’s mark in the photo. Let me see if I can even verify the location on Google Maps with photos there. Wait, there are a whole series of panels along this wall. These appear to just be decorations.
At this point, I am looking for a reason to reject this. Is that the submitter’s friend in the photo, identifying the submitter? I am not sure abuse is being committed, so I won’t choose that, but I could reject for a recognizable face. Or, doesn’t it look like you can’t really get to the panel without pushing past tables, so maybe I could say it doesn’t have access.
I hope this helps. I think this nomination could have gone either way. But I don’t think that reviewers trying to do a good job were clearly wrong to reject it.
To add to this, sometimes rejections don’t make any sense. This was the worst I’ve experienced. The background to this is that there are a series of similar mooring signs, some of which were already wayspots and I nominated the four that weren’t. The other three were accepted and this one wasn’t. The other three had combinations of Hales / Rye Farm Meadow and West / Central Mooring Sign in the same format.
I have bursts of nominating then run out of steam and it takes me a while to get inspired to start again. I parked this one until my next batch of nominations several months later. It went straight through. There is merit in giving a problematic nomination a break.
would make it look stunning in the photo disc and would make a lovely gift too
